LOTUS EMIRA

This is a truly crucial coupé: Hethel’s final combustion-engined car, its first creation under Geely ownership and the replacement for not one but three models

- MIKE DUFF

TESTED 18.2.22, NORFOLK ON SALE SPRING PRICE £75,995

TESTER ’S NOTE Lotus has abandoned the option of 2+2 seating. The Evora was never capable of transporting anyone but the smallest of occupants in its rear. But the Emira still has a useful amount of space behind the seats to store bags and squashier items. And the 151-litre boot behind the engine can apparently take a set of golf clubs. MD

Lotus’s last new petrol-engined car must also be its most successful. The Emira is charged with replacing Lotus’s entire outgoing range – the Elise, Evora and Exige – but will need to reach greater heights than those cars ever did collectively.

Big money has been spent on fitting a new high-tech production line at Hethel – one that features autonomous sleds to move cars between work stations and which we’re told has been scaled to build up to 4500 cars per year. That’s a production figure Lotus hasn’t got close to since it was assembling the Vauxhall VX220/Opel Speedster alongside the still-fresh Elise S2 in the early noughties. With the need for revenue to help fund the forthcoming wave of pure-electric cars, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Yet you will be pleased to hear that our first experience behind the wheel of the Emira is reassuringly familiar. Lotus has been inviting journalists to Hethel to drive new models on the factory’s test track since it first moved to Norfolk in the 1960s. It would feel wrong to be piloting a new Lotus anywhere else for the first time.